Tag Archives: Lane Financial

I expect that next week’s reinsurance jamboree in Monte Carlo will be full of talk of innovative and technology streaming-lining business models (as per this post on AI and insurance). This recent article from the FT is just one example of claims that technology like blockchain can reduce costs by 30%. The article highlights questions about whether insurers are prepared to give up ownership of data, arguably their competitive advantage, if the technology is really to be scaled up in the sector.

As a reminder of the reinsurance sector’s cost issues, as per this post on Lloyds’, the graph below illustrates the trend across Lloyds’, the Aon Benfield Aggregate portfolio, and Munich’s P&C reinsurance business.

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Until the sector gets serious about cutting costs, such as overpaid executives on luxury islands or expensive cities and antiquated business practises such as holding get togethers in places like Monte Carlo, I suspect expenses will remain an issue. In their July review, Willis stated that a “number of traditional carriers are well advanced in their plans to reduce their costs, including difficult decisions around headcount” and that “in addition to cost savings, the more proactively managed carriers are applying far greater rigor in examining the profitability of every line of business they are accepting”. Willis highlighted the potential difficulties for the vastly inefficient MGA business that many have been so actively pursuing. As an example of the type of guff executives will trot out next week, Swiss Re CEO, Christian Mumenthaler, said “we remain convinced that technology will fundamentally change the re/insurance value chain”, likely speaking from some flash office block in one of the most expensive cities in the world!

On market conditions, there was positive developments on reinsurance pricing at the January renewals after the 2017 losses with underlying insurance rates improving, as illustrated by the Marsh composite commercial rate index (example from US below).

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However, commentators have been getting ever more pessimistic as the year progresses, particularly after the mid-year renewals. Deutsche Bank recently called the reinsurance pricing outlook “very bleak”. A.M. Best stated that “the new normal for reinsurers appears to be one with returns that are less impressive and underwriting and fee income becoming a larger contributor to profits” and predicts, assuming a normal large loss level, an 8% ROE for 2018 for the sector. Willis, in their H1 report, puts the sectors ROE at 7.7% for H1 2018. S&P, in the latest report that is part of their Global Highlights series, also expects a ROE return for 2018 around 6% to 8% and estimates that “reinsurers are likely to barely cover their cost of capital in 2018 and 2019”.

S&P does question why “the market values the industry at a premium to book value today (on average at 1.24x at year-end 2017), and at near historical highs, given the challenges” and believes that potential capital returns, M&A and interest rate rises are all behind elevated valuations. The recent Apollo PE deal for Aspen at 1.12 times book seems a large way off other recent multiples, as per this post, but Aspen has had performance issues. Still its interesting that no other insurer was tempted to have a go at Aspen with the obvious synergies that such a deal could have achieved. There is only a relatively small number of high quality players left for the M&A game and they will not be cheap!

As you are likely aware, I have been vocal on the impact the ILS sector has had in recent years (most recently here and here). With so-called alternative capital (at what size does it stop being alternative!) now at the $95 billion-mark according to Aon, A.M. Best makes the obvious point that “any hope for near-term improvement in the market is directly correlated to the current level of excess capacity in the overall market today, which is being compounded by the continued inflow of alternative capacity”. Insurers and reinsurers are not only increasing their usage of ILS in portfolio optimisation but are also heavily participating in the sector. The recent purchase by Markel of the industry leading and oldest ILS fund Nephila is an interesting development as Markel already had an ILS platform and is generally not prone to overpaying.

I did find this comment from Bob Swarup of Camdor in a recent Clear Path report on ILS particularly telling – “As an asset class matures it inevitably creates its own cycle and beta. At this point you expect fees to decline both as a function of the benefits of scale but also as it becomes more understood, less of it becomes alpha and more of it becomes beta” and “I do feel that the fees are most definitely too high right now and to a large extent this is because people are trying to treat this as an alternative asset class whereas it is large enough now to be part of the general mix”. Given the still relatively small size of the ILS sector, it’s difficult for ILS managers to demonstrate true alpha at scale (unless they are taking crazy leveraged bets!) and therefore pressure on current fees will become a feature.

A.M. Best articulated my views on ILS succinctly as follows: “The uncorrelated nature of the industry to traditional investments does appear to have value—so long as the overall risk-adjusted return remains appropriate”. The graph below from artemis.bm shows the latest differential between returns and expected cost across the portfolio they monitor.

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In terms of the returns from ILS funds, the graph below shows the underlying trend (with 2018 results assuming no abnormal catastrophic activity) of insurance only returns from indices calculated by Lane Financial (here) and Eurekahedge (here). Are recent 5 year average returns of between 500 and 250 basis points excess risk free enough to compensation for the risk of a relatively concentrated portfolio? Some think so. I don’t.

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Whether reinsurers and specialty insurers will be able to maintain superior (albeit just above CoC) recent returns over ILS, as illustrated in this post, through arbitrating lower return ILS capital or whether their bloated costs structures will catch them out will be a fascinating game to watch over the coming years. I found a section of a recent S&P report, part of their Global Highlights series, on cat exposures in the sector, amusing. It stated that in 2017 “the reinsurance industry recorded an aggregate loss that was assessed as likely to be incurred less than once in 20 years” whilst “this was the third time this had happened in less than 20 years“.

So, all in all, the story is depressingly familiar for the sector. The new normal, as so many commentators have recently called it, amounts to overcapacity, weak pricing power, bloated cost structures, and optimistic valuations. Let’s see if anybody has anything new or interesting to say in Monte Carlo next week.

As always, let’s hope there is minimal human damage from any hurricanes such as the developing Hurricane Florence or other catastrophic events in 2018.

Insurance linked securities (ILS) are now well established in the insurance industry. ILS as an asset class offer, according to its many fans, the benefits of diversification and low correlation to other asset classes whilst offering a stable and attractive risk/reward return. The impact of the new capital on the traditional market has been profound and wide ranging (and a much posted upon topic in this blog – here, here & here for example).

ILS fund managers maintained an “aggressive posture” on price at the recent April renewals according to Willis Re as ILS capacity continues to demonstrate its cost of capital advantage. ILS fund managers are also looking to diversify, moving beyond pure short tail risks and looking at new previously uninsured or underinsured exposures, as well as looking to move their capital along the value-chain by sourcing primary risk more directly and in bulk.

An industry stalwart, John Kavanagh of Willis Re, commented that “with results on many diversifying non-catastrophe classes now marginal, there is greater pressure on reinsurers to address the pricing in these classes” and that “many reinsurers remain prepared to let their top line revenue growth stall and are opting to return excess capital to their shareholders”. The softening reinsurance market cycle is now in its fifth year and S&P estimates that “even assuming continued favourable prior-year reserve releases and benign natural catastrophe losses, we anticipate that reinsurers will barely cover their cost of capital over the next two years”.

Rather than fight the new capital on price, some traditional (re)insurers are, according to Brandan Holmes of Moody’s, “deploying third-party capital in their own capital structures in an effort to lower their blended cost of capital” and are deriving, according to Aon Benfield, “significant benefits from their ability to leverage alternative capital”. One can only fight cheap capital for so long, at some stage you just arbitrage against it (sound familiar!).

A.M. Best recently stated that “more collateralised reinsurance programs covering nonpeak exposures are ceded to the capital markets”. The precipitous growth in the private transacted collateralised reinsurance subsector can be seen in the graph from Aon below.

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Nick Frankland of Guy Carpenter commented that “the capital landscape is ever-changing” and that “such capital diversity also elevates the position of the broker”. Some argue that the all-powerful role of the dominant brokers is exacerbating market softness. These brokers would counterargue that they are simply fulfilling their role in an efficient market, matching buyers and sellers. As Frankland puts it, brokers are “in the strongest position to provide access to all forms of capital and so secure the more beneficial rates and terms and conditions”. Dominic Christian of Aon Benfield commented last year that “to some extent alternative sources of capital are already, and have already uberized insurance and reinsurance, by bringing increased sources of supply”.

Perhaps alone amongst industry participants, Weston Hicks of Alleghany, has questioned the golden goose of cheap ILS capital stating that “some new business models that separate the underwriting decision from the capital provider/risk bearer are, in our view, problematic because of a misalignment of incentives”. Such concerns are batted aside as old fashioned in this new world of endless possibilities. Frighteningly, John Seo of ILS fund manager Fermat Capital, suggests that “for every dollar of money that you see in the market right now, I think there is roughly 10 dollars on the sidelines waiting to come in if the market hardens”.

As an indicator of current ILS pricing, the historical market spread over expected losses in the public CAT bond market can be seen in the exhibit below with data sourced from Lane Financial. It is interesting to note that the average expected loss is increasing indicating CAT bonds are moving down the risk towers towards more working layer coverages.

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In a previous post, I argued that returns from an ILS fund index, with the net returns judgementally adjusted to get to comparable figures gross of management fees, were diverging against those from a pure CAT bond index. I argued that this divergence may illustrate that the ILS funds with exposure to the private collateralised reinsurance sector may be taking on higher risk exposures to pump returns (or may be passing risks amongst themselves in an embryonic spiral) and that ILS investors should be careful they understand the detail behind the risk profiles of the ILS funds they invest in.

Well, the final 2016 figures, as per the graph below, show that the returns in my analysis have in fact converged rather than diverged. On the face of it, this rubbishes my argument and I have to take that criticism on. Stubbornly, I could counter-argue that the ILS data used in the comparison may not reflect the returns of ILS funds with large exposure to collateralised reinsurance deals. Absent actual catastrophic events testing the range of current fund models, better data sources are needed to argue the point further.

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In their annual review of 2016, Lane Financial have an interesting piece on reducing transparency across both the public and private ILS sector. They characterise the private collateralised reinsurance sector as akin to a dark pool compared to the public CAT bond market which they likened to a lit exchange. Decreased transparency across the ILS sector “should send up warning flags” for all market participants as it makes calculating Net Asset Valuations (NAV) with monthly or quarterly frequency more difficult. They argue that the increased use of a relatively smaller public CAT bond market for pricing points across the ILS sector, the less credible is the overall valuation. This is another way of expressing my concern that the collateralised reinsurance market could be destabilising as it is hidden (and unregulated).

In the past, as per this post, I have questioned how the fully funded ILS market can claim to have a lower cost of capital against rated reinsurers who only have to hold capital against a percentage of their exposed limit, akin to fractional banking (see this post for more on that topic). The response is always down to the uncorrelated nature of ILS to other asset classes and therefore its attraction to investors such as pension funds who can apply a low cost of capital to the investment due to its uncorrelated and diversifying portfolio benefits. Market sponsors of ILS often use graphs such as the one below from the latest Swiss Re report to extoll the benefits of the asset class.

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A similar exhibit, this time from a Lombard Odier brochure, from 2016 shows ILS in an even more favourable light!

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As anybody who has looked through any fund marketing metrics knows, performance comparisons with other investment strategies are fraught with bias and generally postdictive. The period over which the comparison is made and the exact indices chosen (look at the differing equity indices used in the comparisons above) can make material differences. Also, the size and liquidity of a market is important, a point which may negate any reliance on ILS returns prior to 2007 for example.

I thought an interesting exercise would be to compare actual historical ILS returns, as represented by the Swiss Re Global Cat Bond Total Return Index, against total returns (i.e. share price annual change plus dividends paid in year) from equity investment in reinsurers across different time periods. The most applicable business model for comparison would be pure property catastrophe reinsurers but unfortunately there are not many of them left.

I have chosen RenRe (RNR) and Validus (VR), from 2007, as representatives of the pure property cat business model, although both have diversified their portfolios away from pure short tail business in recent years. I also selected three of the biggest European reinsurers – Munch Re, Swiss Re and Hannover Re – all of which are large diverse composite reinsurers. Finally, I constructed a US$ portfolio using equal shares of each of the five firms mentioned above (RenRe represents 40% of the portfolio until 2007 when Validus went public) with the € and CHF shares converted at each year end into dollars.

The construction of any such portfolio is postdictive and likely suffers from multiple biases. Selecting successful firms like RenRe and Validus could validly be criticised under survival bias. To counter such criticism, I would point out that the inclusion of the European reinsurers is a considerable historic drag on returns given their diverse composite footprint (and associated correlation to the market) and the exclusion of any specialist CAT firm that has been bought out in recent years, generally at a good premium, also drags down returns.

The comparison over the past 15 years, see graph below, shows that Munich and Swiss struggle to get over their losses from 2002 and 2003 and during the financial crisis. Hannover is the clear winner amongst the Europeans. The strong performance of Hannover, RenRe and Validus mean that the US$ portfolio matches the CAT bond performance after the first 10 years, albeit on a more volatile basis, before moving ahead on a cumulative basis in the last 5 years. The 15-year cumulative return is 217% for the CAT bond index and 377% return for the US$ equity portfolio.

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The comparison over the past 10 years, see graph below, is intriguing. Except for Validus, the CAT bond index beats all other firms and the US$ portfolio for non-volatile returns hands down in the first 5 years. Hannover, Validus and the portfolio each make a strong comeback in the most recent 5 years. The 10-year cumulative return is 125% for the CAT bond index and 189% return for the US$ equity portfolio.

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The comparison over the past 5 years, see graph below, shows that all firms and the portfolio handily beats the CAT bond index. Due to an absence in large loss activity over the recent past and much more shareholder friendly actions by all reinsurers, the equity returns have been steady and non-volatile. The 5-year cumulative return is 46% for the CAT bond index and 122% return for the US$ equity portfolio.

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Overall then, ILS may offer less volatile and uncorrelated returns but I would personally prefer the, often lumpier, historical equity returns from a selected portfolio of top reinsurers in my pension pot (we all could have both in our pension funds!). Then again, the influx of new capital into ILS has put the future viability of the traditional reinsurance business models into question so future equity returns from the sector may not be too rosy.

At the end of the day, the bottom line is whether current market risk premia is adequate, irrespective of being supplied by ILS fund managers or traditional reinsurers. Based upon what I see, I have grave misgivings about current market pricing and therefore have no financial exposure, ILS or equity or otherwise, to the market at present.

Additional Comment, 29th April 2017: The ILS website Artemis.bm had an interesting piece on comments from Torsten Jeworrek of Munich Re during their March conference call. The applicable comment is as follows:

“And now I give you another example, which is not innovation per se or not digitalization, but you know that more and more alternative capital came into the insurance industry over the last years; hedge funds, pension refunds, participating particularly in the cat business and as a trend that not all of the limits they provide, cat limits are fully collateralized anymore. That means there are 10 scenarios; hurricane, earthquake, [indiscernible], and so on; which are put together, but not 10 times the limit is collateralized, let’s say only 4 times, 5 times.

That means these hedge funds and pension funds so to speak in the future if they don’t have to provide full 100% collateralized for all the limits they provide, they need a certain credit risk for the buyer. The more they entertain, the more there’s a likelihood that this reinsurance can also fail. The question is how far will that go and this kind of not fully collateralized reinsurance, will that be then accepted as a reinsurance by the regulator or will that be penalized at a certain time otherwise we don’t have level playing field anymore, which means the traditional reinsurer who was strongly monitored and regulated and also reported as really expensive and a burden for our industry and for us and on the other hand, you have very lean pension and hedge funds who even don’t have to provide the same amount of capital for the same risk.”

The insurance sector has been hit by the Brexit fallout on worries about macro-economic impacts; albeit not to the same extend as the banks. Swiss Re has their latest Sigma world insurance report out. The impact of investment returns on the life insurance sector is obvious but it is interesting to see the contribution from investment income on the profitability of the aggregate of the eight largest markets in the non-life insurance sector, as per the graph from the report below.

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The insurance sector faces a number of challenges as a recent FT article pointed out. The reinsurance sector also faces challenges, not least of which is a competitive pricing environment and the destabilising influx of new yield seeking capital through new innovations in the insurance linked securities (ILS) market. I have posted my views on the ILS sector many times (more recently here) and in this post I offer more similar thoughts. It is interesting to compare the ROEs in the Sigma report from the non-life insurance sector against those from the reinsurance sector (with the ROEs since 2005 coming from the Guy Carpenter composite index), as per the graph below.

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The graph is not exactly comparing like with like (e.g. non-life insurance versus composite reinsurance) but it gives the general idea of higher but more volatile ROEs in the reinsurance side compared to more stable but lower ROEs on the direct insurance side. The average since 1999 for insurance is 7% and 9% for reinsurance, with standard deviations of 3.6% and 4.6% respectively. It also confirms that ROEs are under pressure for both sectors and as capital markets continue to siphon off volatile excess catastrophe exposed business, the ROEs of the more proportional traditional reinsurance sector are converging on those of their direct brethren, although a differential will always exist given the differing business models.

It is important to note that these ROEs are returns on equity held by traditional insurers and reinsurers, the majority of which are highly rated by external agencies, who hold a small fraction of their total exposure (if measured as the sum of the policy limits issued) as capital. For example, the new European solvency framework, Solvency II, requires capital at a 1 in 200 level and it is generally assumed to be akin to a financial strength rating of BB or BBB, depending upon a firm’s risk profile.

As I argued previously (more recently in this post), these (re)insurers are akin to fractional reserve banks and I still struggle to understand how ILS structures, which are 100% collaterised, can offer their investors such an attractive return given their fully funded “capital” level in the ROE calculation. The industry argument is that investors have a lower cost of capital due to the uncorrelated nature of the pure insurance risk present in ILS.

My suspicion is that the lower cost of capital assigned by investors is reflective of a lack of understanding of the uncertainties surrounding the risks they are taking on and an over-reliance on modelling which does not fully consider the uncertainties. My fear is that capital is been leveraged or risks are been arbitraged through over-generous retrocession deals passing on under-priced risk to naive capital newcomers.

The accelerating growth in the so-called alternative capital in insurance is shown in the graph below from Aon Benfield, with growth in the private collaterised reinsurance being particularly strong in the last four years (now overshadowing the public CAT bond market). ILS funds, managed by professional asset manager specialists, are largely behind the growth in private collaterised deals with assets under management growing from $20 billion in 2012 to over $50 billion today. Private collaterised deals are usually lower down the reinsurance tower (e.g. attach at lower loss levels) and as such offer higher premiums (as a percentage of limits, aka rate on line or ROL) for the increased exposure to loss. On a risk adjusted basis, these don’t necessarily offer higher ROEs than higher attaching/lower risk CAT bonds.

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Property catastrophe pricing has been under particular pressure in the past few years due to the lack of significant insured catastrophe losses. In a previous post, I crudely estimate CAT pricing to be 25% below its technical rate. Willis Re is the first of the brokers to have its mid-year renewal report out. In it, Willis said that ILS funds “were more aggressive on pricing during the second quarter as spreads declined for liquid reinsurance investments”. I also find it interesting that the collaterised ILW volumes have ticked up recently. Pricing and lax terms and conditions in the retrocession sector are historically a sign that discipline is breaking down. Asset managers in the ILS space must be under pressure in maintaining their high fees in a reduced CAT risk premia environment and this pressure is likely to be contributing to the potential for market indiscipline.

I therefore find the graph below very telling. I used the figures from Lane Financial (see here) for the annual total return figures from CAT bonds, which closely match those of the Swiss Re Total Return Index. For the ILS fund returns I used the figures from the Eurekahedge ILS Advisors Index which I adjusted to take out the not unconsiderable typical ILS fund management fees. The 2016 figures are annualized based upon published year to date figures (and obviously assume no major losses).

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The graph shows that ILS fund returns have broken with historical patterns and diverged away from those of CAT bonds as the prevalence in private collaterised deals has grown in recent years. In other words, ILS funds have moved to higher rate on line business, which is by definition higher risk, as they push to service the larger level of assets under management. The question is therefore do the investors really understand the significance of this change? Have they adjusted their cost of capital to reflect the increased risk? Or are some ILS funds representing the higher returns as their ability to get higher returns at the same risk level (against the trend of everybody else in the industry in a softening market)?

Innovation is to be encouraged and a necessary part of progress. Innovation dependent on the naivety of new investors however does not end well.

I can’t but help think of Michael Wade’s comment in 2009 about the commonality between the financial crisis and problems at Lloyds of London (see this post on lessons from Lloyds) when he said that “the consequence with the excess capital was that underlying risks could be underpriced as they were being passed on”. My advice to ILS investors is the next time they are getting a sales pitch with promises of returns that sound too good, look around the room, and ask yourself who is the greater fool here….

Disclaimer

This blog represents my personal views and is not reflective of the views or opinions held by any company or employer I work for currently or have worked for in the past. The views expressed herein are based solely upon publicly available data. No views expressed herein should be taken as an endorsement to take any particular course of action in the markets. The basis of this blog is that different views should be expressed and readers make up their own minds on the what they believe and act accordingly.